"I can't die now, I have so much work to do"
About this Quote
A mortal deadline meets an immortal vocation in that one sharp line. "I can't die now" sounds like gallows humor, but it doubles as a protest: not against death as an abstract terror, but against unfinished obligation. Machen isn't bargaining for more time to travel or indulge; he frames life as assignment. The phrase "so much work" strips out romance and replaces it with duty, as if his calendar, not his body, has the deciding vote.
Context makes the defiance land harder. Machen was a Presbyterian theologian and polemicist who spent his career fighting modernist theology, helping found Westminster Theological Seminary, and later the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. By the time he said this (often recalled near the end of his life), he was worn down by institutional conflict and the sheer administrative grind of building alternative structures when he believed the mainline church had drifted. That background turns "work" into more than writing and lecturing; it means safeguarding a tradition he thought was under siege.
The subtext is both spiritual and stubbornly human. A theologian is supposed to be ready for death; Christian rhetoric prizes the "good death" as acceptance, even peace. Machen's refusal complicates that piety in a way that feels honest: faith doesn't erase urgency. It can intensify it. The line also functions as self-mythmaking, casting him as a worker in the field until the last light, which is exactly how embattled movements want their leaders remembered.
Context makes the defiance land harder. Machen was a Presbyterian theologian and polemicist who spent his career fighting modernist theology, helping found Westminster Theological Seminary, and later the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. By the time he said this (often recalled near the end of his life), he was worn down by institutional conflict and the sheer administrative grind of building alternative structures when he believed the mainline church had drifted. That background turns "work" into more than writing and lecturing; it means safeguarding a tradition he thought was under siege.
The subtext is both spiritual and stubbornly human. A theologian is supposed to be ready for death; Christian rhetoric prizes the "good death" as acceptance, even peace. Machen's refusal complicates that piety in a way that feels honest: faith doesn't erase urgency. It can intensify it. The line also functions as self-mythmaking, casting him as a worker in the field until the last light, which is exactly how embattled movements want their leaders remembered.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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